Don't Turn Away
by Veritable Ocean
Summary: Raoul has grown up since he first met Christine Daae. His experiences in the Franco-Prussian War have left him adrift in a world without either war or the innocence of childhood. Will the crisis at the Opera heal him or break him forever?
1. Prologue

When Raoul thinks back to the days at the Paris Opera House, he looks back with wonder. So many things could have gone wrong, should have gone wrong, but somehow they did not; somehow it seemed that everything came right. Then he remembers those who truly paid the price, the ones the Phantom killed and wonders why he doesn't feel guiltier about their deaths. He thinks perhaps it is because somewhere in his mind he's always felt that the Phantom must have changed after those days, that the Shah's assassin, the mad architect, the torturer, murderer, could not have continued as he was. There is a part of him, though, that believes it is because although neither he nor Christine killed the Opera Ghost, they might as well have. Either way, he believes that the murders stopped, that wherever the Phantom was, in this life or the next, he had taken no more lives.

This fact does not stop him from wondering, wondering if it was possible for the Phantom to have been redeemed. Perhaps it is only because he has looked into the same abyss that it troubles him so, and perhaps it is something else, some other part of the kinship he felt with the monster that he has never openly acknowledged. Raoul believed deeply in redemption, even in those days, believed that one could always find a path to change. He wonders if the Phantom ever found that way out. He often thinks of what Christine said, that night so long ago, that the Phantom's face was no longer what she feared, that it was his soul that was deformed. Even innocent Christine, who had for so long refused to see the harshness of the real world, recoiled from him in hate. He remembers all these things and they temper and morph over time, but all of them ring just as true as they did during those days.

He hadn't understood, at first, what drew him to Christine so strongly he could not fight it. She was so wrapped up in fairy tales and grief and unreality that a part of him despised her, for he had already seen too much of life. This part of him wondered that she had not chosen the Phantom, for it would have been a perfect fairy-tale, the beautiful singer saving the monster from himself. Christine always understood this feeling and would come and stand with him on the balcony of their home on the nights when he would be unable to shake his fear that none of this had happened, that she had never grown into the woman she was now, the woman he had always sensed she could be, the woman he fell in love with, the woman he had fought to free both from the Phantom and from the grip of her own fears. And she told him,

"I never would have been happy with him, you know. Neither of us loved the other truly, but only the mask the other wore. He loved my voice and my innocence and my beauty; I had everything he had ever wanted and could never have. It made him wild, unpredictable and obsessive, for he could not decide if he wanted to break me or possess me. I wanted him as a replacement for my father, the fairy-tales of my childhood; he told me that I never needed to leave the place I had found shelter, never needed to move on. I only desired him as much as I feared the world outside the Opera and the walls I had built. You saw me, believed in who I could be, who I really was before I knew it myself, and you fought so that I could make a choice, knowing the choice I was making, with no guarantee I would choose you. Is it any wonder, then, that when I saw clearly I knew who loved me truly and who I truly loved?" She always smiled at him then, the smile of a woman who has seen what it is she wants most in the world and has it, the smile of a woman who is happy and loves.

And when she died, too soon, much too soon, he was left alone, for the children had all grown and had left and he had nothing but his aches, the aches of an old man with old wounds and an empty heart. He returned to Paris to bury Christine near her father, to go to the Opera House, to see it one last time and to say farewell the only way he knew how. And maybe, somewhere deep inside, he thought that in returning, he would let the Opera Ghost know, if somehow he lived, that Christine was dead, for if the Phantom lived than he was owed that, despite everything. He felt Christine smiling at him again that day, for if he had taught Christine to live, she had taught him how to forgive. He honors her by making his peace with the past, this day and every day.

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Author's Note: This piece came to me after I watched the 25th Anniversary Production of the musical. I have always been bothered by the lack of coherence in the musical's treatment of Raoul and the Phantom and the stellar performance of Hadley Fraser gave me some of the answers I sought. It seems to me that Raoul in the musical is essentially three characters from the novel in one: he is his older brother, Philippe, the immature Raoul that we meet most often in the book, and Raoul as he could be when he has matured. In this fiction, I have tried to separate out these characters in several ways. First, I have restored Raoul's brother to the plot. Second, I have played slightly with the time-frame, setting the main part of the action in 1876, so that Raoul could have participated in the Franco-Prussian War. This has allowed me to use a mostly mature Raoul, who has a clearer grasp of his own motivations and can thus articulate them better, both to himself and to the reader. Finally, I have sought a way to keep the Phantom believable and pitiable, but to also emphasize what the musical often loses track of: that the Phantom has no moral scruples and has committed and continues to commit reprehensible crimes. Hopefully as I continue my work on this piece I will be able to return to the beginning and make everything more clear. Any feedback that you have is much appreciated.


	2. Overture

It was 1876 and Paris was alive once more. The Third Republic was slowly steadying after beginning during a war that France had lost catastrophically. The city was roiling with political intrigue, with culture and light and music. The new Opera House, only two years old, seemed both a monument to the age that had passed and a beacon of hope, that the new France would continue on with the best of the old France. Most Paris residents thought that it was because of this attitude that the Comte de Chagny had become the new patron of the Opera. Only the Comte knew for certain that this was false. The Comte de Chagny had become the patron of the Opera in an attempt to bring his wandering brother home.

The previous Comte, the current Comte's father, had two sons, Philippe and Raoul. Philippe, the older, was the heir and the beloved son, while Raoul was mainly ignored. The results of this treatment had not been so uneven as might be supposed, mainly because Raoul had been allowed to roam the countryside around the estate and so had made friends as Philippe had not. When Raoul turned 17, their father had decided that he needed a career, or at least some experience to make him a man who would be useful to his brother. So it was that the younger brother found himself in the army when the Franco-Prussian war broke out. Raoul had earned honors and promotions in the war that followed and his career seemed to thrive even as Paris was besieged by the enemy. Then the war had ended and Raoul's promotions had ceased and his letters had first slowed and then stopped altogether. The Comte had died shortly thereafter, leaving Philippe to try and fix whatever had changed between him and his brother while learning his new duties. The first thing he had done with his new authority was write his brother and tell him he could come home, he didn't need to re-enlist as their father had said.

"Come home," Philippe had written, "even if it is only for a visit before you go back to the army. The villagers miss you and I too have missed my little brother."

Raoul had returned, at least in body. Philippe had been quietly working in his study when a servant had come in to announce the presence of the Vicomte de Chagny. He had stood, waiting to welcome his little brother, when a stranger wearing his brother's face had walked in. Raoul had changed, and in place of the boy who loved music and fairy stories, who was the village's darling and had more in common with an unbroken colt than any human Philippe had ever met was a serious, contained man, with eyes that were shuttered and blank and a stiff, military bearing. Their conversation that night was stilted, Philippe reeling from shock and Raoul either unwilling or unable to extend any help or comfort. It was only after two weeks of tension that the brothers had finally spoken properly. Raoul had come across Philippe in the garden, where Philippe had always gone when his responsibilities pressed on him. Philippe had been wondering when it was that he had failed his brother, when his efforts to please their father and let Raoul run free had led to this and had not noticed his approach until his brother sat beside him.

"I am sorry," Raoul began, and Philippe turned to look at him and found that for the first time, he could see echoes of the brother he had known in the man beside him. "I have not known how to come home. I dreamt for so long of seeing this place again, but it has changed and I have changed and I cannot find how to be both who I am now and who I used to be."

"I too am sorry," Philippe responded. "I have been so lost in my own thoughts that I have not reached out as I should." Raoul stared at him for a moment and then said,

"You must know, I have never blamed you for any of this. You gave me my childhood by your diligence and self-sacrifice and for that I am forever grateful. The memory of those days gave me light when I most needed it."

"But now you are rudderless, without either childhood or war."

"Yes." Philippe considered this for a long moment, then sighed.

"I cannot give them back to you. You can rejoin the army, if that is your wish." Raoul looked startled but shook his head. "You can go to school, or into whatever occupation you think will suit you." Here Raoul shook his head again, more slowly, with regret clear on his features. Once, this would have been an opportunity he had longed for. Now it was an empty choice, for he would not be able to endure it. "Or, I will give you a monthly allowance, and you can go and see the world and try to find the answers you seek."  
>"Thank you."<p>

Raoul had been gone for two years. He wrote sporadically, short letters that told only of where he had been and what he had seen, not of how he was doing or feeling. Philippe had hoped for better, but had secretly expected worse at the beginning. Now he had begun to feel as if he had waited long enough. When he was approached about helping to finance the Paris Opera, he at first was inclined to refuse. He liked music and the arts well enough, but he had no refined taste or understanding of quality. Then, he had remembered how Raoul had loved music and the way he used to criticize even the phonographs of famous orchestras, complaining about their playing of this passage or that, or how the aria had been sung with improper this or too much that. So Philippe had agreed and had sent a letter to his brother, asking for help in his new venture, if Raoul could bear to come to Paris. He had nearly given up hope, when Raoul arrived, two days before the transfer of patronage would take effect.

Raoul had been in Sweden, in a small village along the sea but far from anywhere important when Philippe's letter had reached him. The children of the village had brought the letter to him at his spot on the hill, and had used it as leverage to beg for a story. He told them one of the stories that Monsieur Daae had told to him so long ago and they listened with rapt attention. When he finished, they gave him the letter and ran down to the town in a sort of happy confusion, chasing each other and reenacting their favorite moments of the story. He smiled at them, a genuine smile, which no longer surprised him as it once had. He was not healed, perhaps he would never be, but he saw now that the evil and ugliness in the world was not enough to destroy all that he loved. He had come to Sweden three months ago, searching for the last pieces that could make him whole again, and he had found them. So when he opened his brother's letter and found not the usual veiled plea for information, but a request that he come home and help with the Paris Opera, he felt as if the last of his burdens had been lifted. He had been searching for something to do, some way to go home and begin to feel useful and Philippe had given him that. He folded the letter, and set out for the village to make preparations to leave. He would go, and see this new and wonderful opera House and see if he could help make it into something France could be truly proud of.


End file.
